The Seventh Bullet (16 page)

“The real ‘unruly classes’ are those ‘respectabilities’ with ‘pulls,’ and these governmental officers who are ‘pulled; they violate the laws; they purchase or enact or enforce unjust legislation; they abuse the confidence and the tolerant good nature of the people; they misuse the machinery of justice.”

–David Graham Phillips,
The Reign of Gilt

“W
ell, Watson,” Sherlock Holmes asked me as we emerged from the long concourse, “what do you make of Union Station? It is but five years old.”

We had just disembarked from our railway carriage in Washington, D.C.; and despite the natural excitement engendered by our locale, I must admit to having felt tired. The journey by train that had begun late Sunday night in New York and that had terminated early Monday morning at the virtual seat of the American government had fatigued me.

Grasping the back of one of the numerous wooden benches,
I gazed upwards at the cavernous Main Hall in which we now found ourselves.

“It is remarkably large,” I responded unimaginatively, feeling dwarfed below lofty arches of coffered ceiling and airy skylighting. Encircling the vast room on a sort of abbreviated mezzanine a few yards above our heads stood some fifty centurions of stone, each at stoic attention behind a massive shield.

“It rather reminds one of Ancient Rome,” I added, hoping to give a better account of my powers of observation.

“Capital, Watson! In spite of your exposure to the New World, your sense of history has remained intact. Constantinian arches. Pompeian traceries. Indomitable legionnaires. Indeed, the whole structure is said to be modelled after the Roman Baths of Caracalla.”

He allowed me no time to relish my architectural acumen, however. “Onward, old fellow,” he prodded. “We have an appointment with Beveridge to keep.”

Holmes and I emerged into a grey, damp morning. Beneath the mammoth statuary depicting Prometheus and Thales, Ceres and Archimedes, and Freedom and Imagination that peered over the three curving portals of the railway station, we edged through the crowd to Massachusetts Avenue, the street immediately before us, taking care not to slip on the wet pavement. “The District of Columbia, Watson,” Holmes said, waving his ebony stick as if it were a brush and he a landscape artist painting the broadest of canvases. “The capital of America designed by a Frenchman. A city of ironies—like the country itself.”

Holmes’s energy seemed boundless. A restless night in a train would tire most men his age as it certainly had wearied me, but not Sherlock Holmes! Ever the enthusiastic cicerone, he
pointed out in the distance to the right the obelisk that is the Washington Monument and, closer to us, the massive columnar white buildings that put me in mind of the imposing and stolid edifices of Whitehall. So zealous was he that my own drowsiness began to fade, and I soon experienced the rush of excitement that being in a world centre generates. To be sure, the youthful capital that surrounded us lacked the grandeur and the majesty of London, the hub of empire, but this emerging metropolis, so dramatic a representation of the democratic ideal, seemed poised to herald the arrival of a new and mighty power which, like the city itself, would rise in stature, set to take her place of importance on the world’s stage.

“Regard,” Holmes said, aiming his stick down Delaware Avenue, the tree-lined road that rolled out directly before us and at whose end, framed by red oak trees, stood the magnificent white-domed Capitol.

“Beautiful,” I murmured. “Who would think that such a grand edifice could be the home of the despicable corruption documented by Phillips?”

“Yes,” Holmes agreed. “Or in whose rotunda the bodies of three presidents—all murdered within some thirty-five years of one another—would lie in state. Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley.”

As I contemplated his macabre litany, he asked, “Do you see the statue at the top?”

I could barely distinguish a figure high above.

“Freedom Triumphant,” Holmes explained. “A fitting piece, don’t you think? It was cast in bronze by slaves.”

In light of his previous observation, I assumed he was once more being ironic.

“The sculpture was done by Thomas Crawford,” Holmes continued. “One hand holds a wreath; the other rests on a sword. Do you know, Watson, that although she’s wearing a feathered headdress, she reminds me of the statue of Justice atop the Old Bailey.”

“The dome makes me think of the cupola of St. Paul’s,” I observed.

Here Holmes smiled. “May good acts in both temples,” he intoned with mock solemnity, “lead their inhabitants to heaven. But lest we become too pious, Watson,” he added, his eyes twinkling, “let us not forget how the late Mark Twain described the inhabitants of this so-called holy place: ‘the only distinctively native American criminal class.”

We both laughed and, lightened by our levity, undertook the short walk across Massachusetts Avenue to Delaware at whose terminus, as I noted previously, stood the Capitol. To its right, I might add, began the recently laid out greensward known as the National Mall. Would that we had had the opportunity to visit the provocative museums bordering the verdant grounds, enticements such as the castle-like, red-sandstone Smithsonian Institution— “Built with money bequeathed by the scientist James Smithson. An Englishman, Watson,” Holmes said with not a little patriotic pride—but since we were shortly to see Beveridge, we had no time for adopting the guise of tourists.

Our destination, however, was not yet to be the Capitol, but rather the newly completed Senate Office Building just down the road on our left. Holmes had arranged its northwest entrance, the corner closest to Union Station, to be the site of our meeting with Beveridge, who, having left New York with Rollins in the motor
car immediately following our mutual encounter with Detective Ryan in Mrs. Frevert’s flat, was due to have arrived in Washington late the previous day. Beveridge had eagerly offered to convey
us
as well, but Holmes had desired the opportunity to speculate and theorise unobserved by principals in the case.

When we reached our rendezvous point in the marbled foyer, there was no sign of the former senator. Holmes consulted his pocket watch and, fearing any unnecessary loss of time, concluded that we should begin our enquiries at once. Armed with the letter of introduction that Roosevelt had given me, therefore, we soon found ourselves in front of a tall, dark door bearing a circular emblem about a foot in diameter that contained an American Indian holding a bow and down-turned arrow. Below the insignia, which proved to be the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was a nameplate proclaiming the office of the most prominent personage on Holmes’s listing of senators charged by Phillips in his article: the senior senator from the aforementioned state, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge.

“‘Vain’ and ‘self-centred,’ Phillips called him,” Holmes reminded me before we entered.

“But isn’t he quite respectable, Holmes?” Even had I not recently read Phillips’s review of the man, I would have recognised the famous family names.

Holmes extracted a small notebook from inside his coat pocket. “Aristocratic pretence, Watson,” he said, referring to his notations on Lodge. “Phillips called the family’s reputation undeserved; he claimed it was based on the slave trade.”

“My word,” I murmured.

“Yes,” Holmes agreed, and then read aloud what he had
previously copied from
The Treason of the Senate.
“A scurvy lot they are with their smirking and cringing and voluble palaver about God and patriotism.’ Strong poison, eh, old fellow?” Holmes asked as he placed his hand on the shining brass knob of Lodge’s office door.

“Wait!” commanded a stentorian voice, and we both immediately turned to see Senator Beveridge running at full gallop down the corridor. Hair askew, too winded and distracted even for cordial greetings, he looked very little like the heroic Hampden Scarborough of Phillips’s novels. It also occurred to me that he was beginning to make a habit of arriving on the scene at the last moment.

“I’ve already scheduled appointments for you, Mr. Holmes,” he said after finally catching his breath, “and Lodge’s office isn’t on the list. In fact, he’s set to give a speech on the Senate floor momentarily, so he isn’t even here. All the senators I’ve arranged for you to see know exactly when you’re expected and when you’ll be leaving.”

“But surprise is just the point, Senator,” Holmes explained in exasperation. “Surely you recognise that the best witnesses are those that are taken off guard—who haven’t had the opportunity to fabricate responses.”

“Perhaps you’re correct, Mr. Holmes, but that’s not the way it’s done around the United States Senate. Think of us as a club with our own set of standards. I may no longer be a senator, but I shall always retain my membership and therefore be obliged to abide by the rules.”

With a steady gaze that told us he was not to be denied, Beveridge extended his arm to indicate the direction we were to
take, and Holmes and I followed; only the white knuckles of my friend’s hand on the walking stick suggested just how much this concession frustrated him.

Undaunted, Beveridge led us down the corridor, and we soon found ourselves in front of a doorway exactly like that which we had almost been able to enter, only this one belonged to Massachusetts’s junior senator. The name on the plate read “Senator Winthrop Murray Crane.”

Once within the large waiting room, Beveridge reminded Senator Crane’s secretary, a Mr. Knowland, about the nature of our business, and the short young man in the dark suit, after knocking only once, escorted us into an adjacent office where the senator was seated at a shiny mahogany desk. Crane rose, shook our hands warmly, and introduced himself, his quiet voice expressing less enthusiasm than did his firm grip. A receding widow’s peak highlighted his balding crown, and drooping moustaches concealed the entire length of his upper lip so that it was hard to determine whether he was smiling or sombre.

“I’ve agreed to talk with you, gentlemen,” he began, “because both Senator Beveridge and President Roosevelt have asked me to.” It was apparent, I realised, that Theodore Roosevelt must have been in very close contact with all his friends linked in some way to the author of
The Treason of the Senate.
“But,” Crane went on in a decidedly serious tone, “the subject you wish to know about— David Graham Phillips—is still most displeasing. He called me an ‘enemy of the country,’ gentlemen, and I don’t deserve that sort of treatment. If a man differs with me, that’s fine. But to call me ‘a treacherous servant’ in print—as that blackguard did—without offering me equal space to rebut is sheer cowardice. It’s been six
years, and I still haven’t forgotten. Many of us here on the Hill haven’t forgotten.”

“Then you were not saddened, I take it, by the news of Phillips’s death?” Holmes asked.

“Gracious me,” Senator Crane said, eyebrows arching like those of a mild-mannered vicar not wishing to offend his flock, “No-one could be happy to hear of anyone’s death. But I will admit to having felt some relief when he was killed; at least I wouldn’t have to read his insults any more.”

“Of course,” Holmes murmured. He paused for a moment, conveying the sense that his next question had not in fact been composed well in advance. Then he asked, “Have you any suggestion, Senator, as to who might have put Goldsborough up to the deed?”

In spite of the moustaches, at this question Crane’s grin radiated confidence. “As far as I know, Mr. Holmes,” he said slowly, “Goldsborough acted alone. But go talk to Van den Acker. He’s always had some screwball notion about the assassination.”

“Van den Acker?” I asked, having forgotten a name I obviously should have recognised.

“The former senator from New Jersey, Watson,” Holmes reminded me. “Another of Phillips’s targets.”

As our conversation turned to pleasantries and it became apparent that we could extract nothing more from Crane about Phillips, we expressed our appreciation to the senator and followed Beveridge out of Crane’s office and down a flight of curving stairs into what appeared to be the basement. With no purpose that I could fathom, Beveridge led us through a long, dark corridor lined at the ceiling with inelegantly exposed water pipes. Much
to my amazement, however, I soon discovered down there in the bowels of the building an open, four-wheel, eight-seat vehicle awaiting our arrival; for (so Beveridge explained) there existed beneath the Senate Office Building a special subway system connecting the block to the Capitol itself. Indeed, following a ride of not more than a minute through a dimly lit, curving tunnel, the self-propelled Studebaker coach deposited us at our destination.

Brushing ourselves off from our brief but dusty journey, we now followed Beveridge up into the Capitol itself. Although entering from its lower level neatly allowed us to avoid the crowded rotunda, we also—unhappily, so the former senator informed us—missed its celebrated Trumbull paintings of the American Revolution. I thought it might be most amusing to view the conflict from the colonists’ side; but Beveridge continued on his course across a multi-hued floor of yellow, blue, and terracotta tiles, up a marble staircase, past some uniformed guards who nodded in recognition at our escort, and through a doorway where we ultimately found ourselves standing in the visitors’ gallery of the Senate chamber.

Because it was still early and the balcony was nearly devoid of people, we had little difficulty finding seats. Anyone who has ever attended a trial at the Old Bailey will certainly appreciate our coign of vantage—in this case, overlooking a large hall about twice as wide as it was deep. Arranged in four semi-circular, concentric rows were wooden desks that faced a multi-tiered rostrum set against the front wall. Despite the fact that business was obviously being conducted, the Senate floor was nearly empty.

“I know that Julius Caesar was murdered in the Roman Senate,” I whispered to Holmes, “but it’s hard to believe that so much of the mischief Phillips documented could occur in so vacant a hall.”

Holmes nodded. “Perhaps that is
why
it occurred,” he replied in a low voice, but then put a finger to his lips to indicate silence. It was obvious as he leaned forward that he wanted to hear the current speaker on the Senate floor, a tall, soft-spoken man with a neatly trimmed Vandyke who, with right hand clasped to a well-tailored lapel, was just concluding his remarks. From the little I could distinguish, the latter seemed to be cautioning his few colleagues present against closer relationships with the Kaiser and Germany. His peroration was greeted with only a sprinkling of applause from the gallery; still, he turned sharply to exit the chamber before this sign of appreciation had ended.